Katarina Zimmer, The Scientist; Scientists Raise Concerns About Revisions to Human Research Regulations
"When Henrietta Lacks visited the Johns Hopkins Medical Center in the
1950s to be treated for cervical cancer, she had no idea that some of
her cancer cells would be used to create one of the most scientifically
valuable and financially profitable cell lines that is used in labs
today. Nor was she asked for permission.
Lacks’s experience has
become nationally acknowledged as a shameful episode in the history of
biomedical research in the US—particularly after the publication of a
popular book about Lacks and her family—and forced the scientific
community to consider how to conduct ethical research with human
samples. The case was one of the reasons for a heated debate during a
recent, six-year-long process of revising the Common Rule,
a package of regulations adopted in the 1990s intended to ensure that
all federally funded research conducted on human subjects is done
ethically.
The revisions, enacted last month, are an attempt to
strike a better balance between patients’ need for privacy and the
benefits of using their tissue for research. In a paper published
January 31 in JAMA Oncology,
a group of clinicians and ethicists from the University of Michigan and
the University of Pennsylvania argue that the revisions could have
unintended consequences for research with various types of biospecimens,
and propose that regulators should consider them differently when
creating research protections."
Issues and developments related to ethics, information, and technologies, examined in the ethics and intellectual property graduate courses I teach at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information. My Bloomsbury book "Ethics, Information, and Technology" will be published in Summer 2025. Kip Currier, PhD, JD
Showing posts with label ethical research with human samples. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethical research with human samples. Show all posts
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